


The Boy Who Finally Stopped Waiting

by SixtySevenChevy



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Doctor!Cas, Gen, boy who waited!dean, possible series idk, technically fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SixtySevenChevy/pseuds/SixtySevenChevy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was four, Dean Winchester's parents died and he went to live with his Uncle Bobby.</p>
<p>A little while after he moved in, he met the Doctor, also called Castiel, who promised him five minutes and left.</p>
<p>Twenty-two years later, he's back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Finally Stopped Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Anon on Tumblr prompted me to write this.   
> I might make it a series or add chapters. It feels incomplete to me.

Dean opens the door, even though he knows Uncle Bobby would kill him for talking to strangers. The man on the other side looks nice, and besides, Dean can take care of himself. He’s four years old, after all. He’s almost a grown-up.

The man on the porch stares at him weirdly, and Dean feels kind of uncomfortable. He can hear Sammy making baby noises in the kitchen. Dean hopes the man isn’t a kidnapper. 

“Hello,” the man says.

“Hi,” Dean murmurs shyly. The man smiles down at him. “Who’re you?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he says.

“Doctor who?”

“You can call me Castiel,” he man says. Dean nods and glances back at the kitchen. Sammy can’t walk yet, but that doesn’t mean he can’t crawl around. Sammy is fast. Dean doesn’t want to lose him. Uncle Bobby would kill them both.

“Dean Winchester,” Dean says.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says back, a slight smile gracing his features. Dean likes this man. He’s nice, and reminds him of the old man who lived next door back before his house burned down and Mommy and Daddy left.

“Hi, Cas,” Dean greets, and he tries really hard to get the rest of the name out too, but it’s hard to pronounce, and besides, Dean’s missing his front two teeth. He settles for the shortened version. Cas looks pleased and smiles wider.

“Can I come in?” Cas asks.

“Where’d you come from?” is Dean’s instant answer. Uncle Bobby wouldn’t like it if Dean let a police man inside again, not after last time.

“A far away planet. Your people call it Heaven. I came here in my time machine,” Cas says.

Dean is a smart little boy, very smart indeed. He knows the entire alphabet, and all his numbers up to forty, and he can add two-plus-two-equals-four. He smart enough to know that of course other planets exist. There’s Venus, and the Sun, and if there’s two, why can’t there be more?

“Can I see?”

“Maybe,” Cas allows with a tilt of his head. “If you go pack a bag, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

XXXXX

Dean sighs and rests his hands on the handle of his shovel, straightening up and surveying his surroundings. He loves this house, even if the garden is a bit difficult sometimes. What with Sam away at college most of the time, Dean does all the housework and things. He doesn’t really mind.

Although, being alone gives him more time to think, and he doesn’t usually like to think much. If he thinks he starts to dwell, to dwell on his ruined childhood and his less-than-enjoyable teenage years. To dwell on his parents, dead in a fire when Sammy was just a baby, and his Uncle Bobby, who raised him until he was killed by a stray bullet last year. To dwell on the mad man in the box from when he was four, who said five minutes, and never returned.

Dean goes back to digging. He’s supposed to be planting an apple tree. Sammy wanted it to be planted in the backyard in honor of his recent engagement. The tree is a sad, lonely little thing, reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Dean loves it.

The birds in the sky are chirping and it’s a lovely spring day. There’s a slight breeze rippling through the trees, whistling through the windows of busted up old cars that Uncle Bobby never got around to working on before the accident. Singer Salvage has never been so homey than on a warm spring day. He and Sam had inherited it, and even though Sam had initially wanted it sold, they’d both come around to loving it here.

Dean grabs the tree by its trunk, hefting it up into the air and depositing it into the hole. For a small tree, it’s rather heavy. He’s just getting around to filling dirt in around the trunk when he hears it.

It’s a whooshing, sort of, but it’s also a grating, and it’s also a screech. The noise cannot be categorized. 

Dean stops and stands, shovel falling to the ground. He knows that sound. The last time he heard that sound was twenty-two years ago, and it hadn’t left him since. It haunts him still.

He looks around wildly, trying to spot it—there! A blue phone box, like the ones they have in Britain, sitting at the edge of the salvage yard like it’s been there all its life. Dean thinks he stops breathing. 

He nearly goes into sudden cardiac arrest when a man steps out.

He’s just like Dean remembers, down to the clothes he’s wearing. He’s shorter than Dean, with dark hair and deep blue eyes, and he’s wearing a trench coat. His head swivels, eyes squinting against the April sun, as if searching. Dean suddenly wishes he were inside, or maybe in California with Sam.

“Hello,” the man calls, his voice a deep rumble of gravel on sandpaper, yet somehow still smooth. Just like the voice from Dean’s childhood.

“Hey,” Dean breathes.

The man walks toward him. Dean feels his knees go weak. This is not happening. He’s been in the sun too long. He should really go inside. He ought to call the police, or maybe an ambulance. He should pick up his shovel to defend himself. Should do something, at least.

“Can you help me?” the Doctor asks. Dean watches as he comes to stand right in front of Dean. If Dean were to reach a little, just barely stretch his fingers, he would be able to brush the lapels of the coat. The thought makes Dean want to cower in his room.

“With what?”

“I’m looking for Dean Winchester.”

Dean can feel the cardiac arrest threatening. “Dean Winchester?”

“Yes. He’s four years old, and I told him I’d be back in five minutes. I can’t be that far off,” the Doctor—Castiel, Dean remembers—explains.

“Dean Winchester hasn’t lived here for a long time,” Dean replies, and it’s true. After a few years of living with Uncle Bobby, he’d just changed it to Dean Singer. It was Sam who kept the Winchester name, having never really met his parents, unlike Dean who can barely remember.

“How long?” Castiel asks, tilting his head to the side.

“Six months,” Dean lies smoothly. Cas gapes at him.

“Six months?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” Dean says, bending to pick up his shovel. Cas looks around, spinning, and his trench coat flaps in the breeze. Dean shuts his eyes and counts to ten, but when he opens them, the man and his blue box are still in his yard.

“Hang on,” Castiel says suddenly, going stock-still and staring at the house. Dean looks with him, but doesn’t see anything odd. It’s just a house, after all. Blue chipped paint, shabby wooden porch, dirty windows, one long crack running down the one beside the door. He’s never bothered to get it fixed. In all honesty, the crack in the window gave him the creeps.

“What? It’s just a house,” Dean says, defensive. Sure, it’s not the nicest house, but it’s his, dammit, and no one insults his house. Uncle Bobby used to love that house. That house is the only house Sammy’s ever known. No one insults his souse, just like no one insults his car.

“It was tan last time I was here,” Castiel murmurs, and then he’s taking off, long strides bringing him quickly to a stop in front of the window with the crack in it. Dean follows, hovering at Cas’ shoulder, still clinging to his shovel. 

Dean feels an intense urge to smack himself in the center of his forehead. Of course. He just painted it the summer before Uncle Bobby’s accident. It had been tan forever before that. “Okay,” Dean mumbles. “It’s been longer than that.”

“How long?” Castiel demands, turning his gaze on Dean. Dean wants to run away and hide, but he gets the feeling that Cas wouldn’t be pleased if he did. Instead, he’s forced to stare into this strange man’s eyes and tell the truth.

“Twenty-two years.”

Castiel goes rigid, and to Dean, it seems like he’s suddenly become stone. It takes a minute for Cas to speak again. “What happened to Dean?”

“He’s still alive,” Dean says, somewhat desperately. “He’s just… not Dean Winchester anymore.”

“What does that mean?” Cas demands, blue eyes boring holes into Dean through his light jacket. Dean squirms, unable to meet his gaze. Cas continues to stare, until Dean has no choice but to blurt out the answer to his question.

“I’m Dean. I changed my name when I was eight.”

“You’re Dean Winchester?”

“Dean Singer.”

“Why?”

“I was raised by my uncle, Bobby Singer.”

Cas nods as if he understands, but Dean can tell he doesn’t. Dean wonders when the last time Castiel had a family was. If his box can travel in time as well as space, it could have been centuries. It could have been seconds. For all Dean knew, it had been exactly six days, eight hours, twenty-nine minutes, four seconds since Castiel had seen his family. (Actually, she wasn’t family, but she was close enough, and Dean doesn’t need to know that.)

“Then you’re Dean Winchester.” Cas grins suddenly, and it lights his features up to the point that Dean’s slightly scared for his sanity. For both of their sanity.

“Yeah,” he hedges.

“Want to come on an adventure?”


End file.
